The discovery that throws light on the archaeological site, in Iran.

A discovery that sheds new light on the exploitation of monkeys in antiquity: in Shahr-i Sokta, in Iran, researchers from the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Salento found a rendered macaque, who died at about five years of age, buried in the necropolis around the 2800-2500 BC according to the same funerary practices used on the site to bury children. The news of the study in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology "was recently published in" Nature Research Hightlights ".
In the 2017 the Department of Cultural Heritage has started the multidisciplinary project MAIPS - Multidisciplinary Archaeological Italian Project at Shahr-i Soktha for the study of the site and materials being excavated by the Iranian Archaeological Mission, which takes place from the 1997 under the direction scientific work by Seyyed Mansur Seyyed Sajjadi of the Iranian Center for Archaeological Research and, for the Italian part, by Enrico Ascalone of the University of Göttingen. Financed by UniSalento and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, the project involves professors Giuseppe Ceraudo (Ancient Topography), Pier Francesco Fabbri (Physical Anthropology), Girolamo Fiorentino (Archeobotanical) and Claudia Minniti (Archeozoology), under whose direction is also used to study animal remains.
"Shahr-i Sokta is one of the most extensive archaeological sites in the Middle East (over 150 hectares), attributable to the Jiroft culture and flourished from the end of the fourth millennium to the beginning of the second millennium BC on the course of the Helmand river", explains the professor Minniti, "The important aspect of this discovery is given by the fact that no species of non-human primates is a native of Iran, the macaque found at Shahr-i Sokta lies outside its natural range. Numerous data document that the Shahr-i Sokta site has maintained commercial and cultural relations with ancient sites and cultures in the Indus valley, on the southern coasts of the Persian Gulf, the Oman Sea, south-western Iran and central Asia .
It is possible to hypothesize also for the rendered macaque a possible origin from the Indus valley, through the present territory of Afghanistan. Although no other non-human primate lived in the Near East or Mesopotamia, these animals were well known in antiquity: numerous written and iconographic sources document how monkeys were generally considered symbols of prosperity and power, for their exotic character (and therefore rare), and how often they represented gifts of exchange between real and elite members of different cultures. They were kept as pets, sometimes depicted on a leash and with human traits, often represented while dancing and playing the flute ».
Claudia Minniti is associate professor of Archaeozoology at the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Salento. His research concerns the study of animal remains from Italian and foreign archaeological contexts of different chronological period from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages, with integration of other disciplines (history, ethnography, zoology, ethology). Besides 100, publications between monographs, conference proceedings and articles in national and international journals.

Source: Corriere Salento